IT took three arm-weary waiters at Del Posto’s ship-length service station 10 noisy minutes to whip up one order of zabaglione – and it got to my table ice-cold. At Morimoto across the street, the clueless crew served us crummy sushi on hot plates.

This is the battle of the mighty TV superchefs?

“Yes, sometimes people come here after they eat at Mario’s,” the adorable Moritmoto hostess gushed. So far, though, the heralded 10th Avenue showdown of “Molto” Mario Batali and “Iron Chef” Matsaharu Morimoto seems a clash, not of titans, but of kitchen crash-test dummies.

In the culinary ant farm where Chelsea and the Meatpacking District collide, New York’s designmad restaurant scene has finally lost its marbles. Squandering bazillions on architecture with scant regard for common sense,

both new joints are overbuilt, over-hyped – and at risk of being just plain over.

As my colleague Braden Keil first reported, 2-month-old Del Posto might have to shut, at least temporarily, due to a feud with its landlord. How could Batali and his savvy Bastianichclan partners have gotten themselves into such a pickle?

And whose idea was it to serve Batali’s inexhaustibly original creations in a rugjoint setting like a 1940s Jersey ballroom, and further mix the messages with fussy, haute-French service gimmicks?

Morimoto, meanwhile, has all the buzz of Teriyaki Boy, thanks to a loony layout that makes it impossible to see those around you. I half-glimpsed Heidi Klum put on an apron behind the sushi bar. And a guy our waiter excitedly ID’d as a “sultan.”

While the great Morimoto himself fussed over Martha Stewart, the rest of us were getting indifferently cut, generic-tasting sushi and rolls. This is owner Stephen Starr’s idea of what he said would be “a notch above Nobu”?

It’s much too early to judge Morimoto’s food, of course, although nobrainers like black cod with ginger-soy reduction and tempura calamari salad were short enough on seasoning for convalescent fare and tasted not remotely Japanese.

But it isn’t too soon to judge what can’t change: the place itself. When you blow a fortune on looks, customers must be able to see the place – a rule both Morimoto and Del Posto toss to the Hudson River winds.

Morimoto’s concrete pillars, sculptural wall of 1,700 water bottles and an undulating fiberglass ceiling knock your eyeballs out – until you notice that the glass wall and massive central staircase (leading to a disjointed downstairs lounge) fatally cleave the house in two.

While A-siders enjoy views of a gleaming open kitchen and sushi and omakase counters – and of their neighbors – everyone else (and most tables for four) are shunted to a Siberia hemmed in by walls and “privacy screens.”

I spent three hours amidst Morimoto’s alleged $11 million splendor facing a blank curtain. (There are even worse tables: If they try steering you to isolated nooks near the front, threaten to scream that you have a bomb.)

Similarly, Del Posto’s monumental marble staircases (to a mezzanine and basement toilets) hog the conspicuously columned, carpeted and curtained void. Some seats at tables against a wall enjoy a view of the gloomiest draperies in captivity, while some on the mezzanine face the wall.

Most of Batali’s brainstorms taste predictably wonderful, and it would be a shame for his great gifts to be wasted on 20,000 square feet of overwrought wood and marble. There are astonishingly supple, herb-permeated orata steamed in paper, and rectangular chestnut ravioli on a bed of supernaturally flavorful squab. But $94-for-two for under-seasoned, moistureshy rack of veal with a pittance of black truffles?

And all those Ducasse-like stunts to justify pasta priced up to $30. An afterdessert sweets trolley. Purse stools. “Pillows for purses but bistro plates for pasta,” a lady near my table snickered.

At Del Posto, a piano player’s nightlong serenade of ballads put me out like a light, while at Morimoto I heard only a thumping “house” beat from the downstairs lounge – appropriate music for two places opened badly out of tune.